Deeplinks Blog posts about Bloggers' Rights

This weekend, EFF learned that Bassel Khartabil, a longtime member of the open source software community and Creative Commons volunteer, has been detained in Syria since March 12, 2012, as part of a wave of arrests made in the Mazzeh district of Damascus. For months, Bassel’s family has had no knowledge of his whereabouts or the reason for his arrest. Only recently have they heard from previous detainees at Kafar Sousa that he is being held at this location. This news is especially alarming in light of a recent Human Rights Watch report documenting the use of torture in 27 detention facilities run by Syrian intelligence agencies.

New Draft of Vietnamese Internet Decree is Still Bad News for Freedom of Expression

Internet shutdowns, content filtering, arrests of bloggers, and online surveillance in North Africa have been headline news for the past year and a half, but internet issues in the rest of the African continent haven’t received quite as much press coverage. This silence is partly because there is simply less internet penetration south of the Sahara, but there may also be a paralyzing current of opinion whereby stories that highlight human rights issues or a lack of democracy in the region are either dismissed as old news or written off as paternalistic.

Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo introduced new user conditions on Monday under which users will be deducted “points” for violating its content policy. Users will be suspended from the website once they run out of points. Rules that prohibit advocating protests or “spreading rumors” have always been a part of overall Chinese internet policy, but the points system is an innovation.